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07 June 2013

OPI Solitaire

I continue to be pleasantly surprised at how much I'm enjoying the textured polish trend! Today I have a standout from the OPI Bond Girls Liquid Sand collection, Solitaire.

OPI Solitaire is a pearlescent white polish with tiny flecks of shimmering silver. Like the rest of the Liquid Sands, it's predominantly matte, with a fine, soft grit, and is meant to be worn without top coat, though I've seen it top coated, and it's lovely that way too!

What makes Solitaire unique--besides the beautiful white colour--is its frosty, pearl base. The combination of colour and finish really is stunning; it looks like glittering snow! However, that frost can also make it a bit more challenging than others among the Liquid Sand line. If you apply Solitaire too heavily, the base can overwhelm the texture and look kind of lumpy. Fortunately, I did my non-swatch hand first and found that thin-to-medium coats (thicker than thin, thinner than medium) seemed to be Solitaire's butter zone. You definitely want to let each coat dry before proceeding, but that doesn't take long at all, and the little bit of patience is so worth it for the results. I'm wearing 3 coats here, four on my middle finger (no surprise it'd be the stubborn one), and the tiny hint of VNL in these pictures was invisible to the naked eye.

I wore Solitaire for about a day and a half with no signs of chipping and spent the whole time marveling at how much I loved it. The white is crisp without appearing stark at all, and the combination of the finishes was all kinds of understated gorgeousness.

Coolio! I'm still not sold on textured, but might give'er a go. Question: on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is two coats of a typical creme and 10 is two coats of your typical micro glitter, how difficult are textured polishes to remove? Thanks!